Tag: registry tweaks

Registry Tweaks to Enhance Your Windows XPerience - Part 8

December 26, 2008 by Jason

In part eight of the our tweaking series we’ll go through a few Control Panel optimizations for Windows XP power users that may not interest most people using their operating system for basic tasks. When they wish to install and especially uninstall a program, users access the Add or Remove Programs component in the Control Panel. However, this window has many other options that a system administrator, for example, would remove for safety reasons.

As we’ve grown accustomed to it by now, Microsoft does not allow users to customize this window in the “old-fashion” way, therefore a workaround is needed and a few modifications to the registry must be performed. That’s where we come in and, fortunately, the registry patching is fast and very easy to perform. For starters, if you’re not familiar with the tweaking process, please take the time to read the first article that will help you understand what the bolded lines below mean and what you should do with them. Read More»

Registry Tweaks to Enhance Your Windows XPerience - Part 3

October 27, 2008 by Jason

Welcome back to the registry optimization saga! If you’re just joining us, please start by reading at least our first episode, which describes a few rules that must be followed in order for the optimization process to take place successfully…

So, now that you’ve opened your tweak.reg file and you’ve written ‘Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00’ at its beginning, let’s head on to some serious business: in today’s episode we’ll cover several important optimizations that you would usually access using Folder Options.

Folder Options is one of the key-windows of any Windows optimization process. You can easily find it by clicking on the Tools menu in Windows Explorer. From the View tab you have access to a variety of essential XP settings regarding the looks and behavior of your Windows Explorer. Therefore if you want to make some of these changes permanent on a regular basis (each time you install your Windows) or apply them on another computer too, just copy the tweaks you’re interested in to your tweak.reg file. Read More»

Understand your registry

October 04, 2008 by Jason

Registry tweaks can fix problems, boost performance and improve Windows features, and the risks are minimal as long as you follow our advice.

There are many ways to change your settings and your applications within Windows. You might click Edit > Preferences or Tools > Options, right-click on a system tray icon, or just poke around in your Control Panel. But the end result is almost always the same. When you’ve tweaked an option and clicked OK, the new setting will be stored in a central database called the registry.

Normally you don’t have to worry about low-level technical details of individual registry settings. But occasionally they can come in useful. If a program won’t start or can’t be reinstalled, for instance, it could be down to a corrupt registry setting: change it and you might fix the problem. Other applications have useful settings that can only be accessed from the registry, too.

There is a potential down side, though. If you delete the wrong registry setting you could corrupt an application, and even prevent Windows from loading on your next reboot. But then Windows Explorer can be dangerous, too, if you start randomly deleting things from the Windows or Program Files folders. Don’t worry though, as long as you’re cautious and sensible – registry editing actually poses very little risk. Read More»